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The Hustle—Economic Sustainability in the Arts Education Field (Part 2)
As we uncovered in our previous post, creating a sustainable living from a long-term arts education career can be difficult whether you’re a teaching artist, public school art teacher, or arts education administrator. However, we believe there is great work and inspiring advocacy being done around pay equity in our field that we want to share to inspire the new generation of arts education leaders to continue to invest in the future of our field.
Leaders in the field must stop accepting the culture of scarcity that has become our norm in the arts and education field. It is our job to stand up and ask for compensation for our time and expertise, finding value in our work and articulating it. Otherwise, when the young people we work with say they want to go into a career in the arts, we won’t have any other response than, “What’s your back-up?”
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101172
The Hustle—Economic Sustainability in the Arts Education Field (Part 1)
A short play:
Me: I want to go into the arts.
Teachers/Friends/Family: What’s your back-up?
All three of us have had this conversation in some form at various points in our lives. We did it anyways. Pay equity for race and gender have been at the forefront of many national conversations, which has led many in arts education to question our own pay structures. In this two-part blog, we explore three different points of view on how pay equity issues affect arts education professionals, whether they are teaching artists, public school arts teachers, or arts education administrators.
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101171
Great Minds See Alike
I am a Colorado native and a third-generation artist. I work in illustration, photography, jewelry, lapidary, painting, printmaking, sculpture, assemblage, and installation art. I’m also the founder of ReArranging Denver, a ten-year-old zero use self-sustaining project that has engaged over 50,000 people, connecting communities to their local business and neighboring cities through creative reuse workshops, installations, and events. I also travel to universities, libraries, art coalitions, and low income and private schools, giving living artist lectures. I always had the impression that most artists died before seeing success, so I decided to start seeing myself as a living artist sharing my secrets of success. As the Americans for the Arts staff learned more about my work, they asked me to share my story with them, with you, and with those about to join forces in Colorado at Convention.
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100987
Reflections on Over 20 Years of Americans for the Arts Conventions
In 1993 I became the Director of New York Programs of the Arts & Business Council Inc., and as head of a national partner arts service organization of Americans for the Arts, I began what has become a very long association with the organization and its Annual Convention, literally attending the first Convention under the Americans for the Arts name—and nearly every one since. I have watched the organization, and its signature convening, grow and evolve over time—responding to the field’s changes and the external environment we all operate in. Now in my role as president of the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation in Denver, Colorado, I have become one of the hosts and funders of the 2018 Annual Convention in Denver. We are so excited to be hosting this conference, and know that the content will be informative and inspirational, and that the City and its cultural assets will enchant.
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101025
Combat Medic to Ceramic Artist: Art as Therapy
I’m a disabled (differently-abled) Operation: Iraqi Freedom (OIF) Veteran who found clay after my medical retirement from the US Army in 2011, where I served as a combat medic. It has turned into a business, a passion, and my art has taken on a new purpose. I am passionate about how much my sculpting has helped me and I have an even deeper passion for sharing this amazing self-care concept/activity with as many people as I can. It is important to remember that art therapy is very different than art as therapy, which I teach and practice for self-care. I feel that the daily activities we do at home for self-care can be just as important as the work done in the therapist’s office. We must learn to be okay with taking our health into our own hands, including our mental health. It’s up to each and every one of us to advocate for what we know is in our best interest.
It is important to remember that art therapy is very different than art as therapy.
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Win More Grants: Integrating Evaluation with Stories
Do you want to wow your donors and secure more funding? Arts programs that consistently attract more funding intentionally combine evaluation results with stories to inspire action.
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100907
Arts Better the Lives of Everyone
At the Berklee Institute for Arts Education and Special Needs, we believe that the arts better the lives of everyone. This is something other countries have figured out, but we still need to learn it here. We still need to learn to welcome all—including people with disabilities—into spaces where performances and exhibits take place. We still need to learn to broaden our understanding of who can be an artist, and what an artist looks like. We still need to learn how to open up our classrooms to all students and break down barriers to arts learning so that arts education, artistic expression, and artistic engagement can be a powerful, meaningful, and significant part of everyone’s life.
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100860
Culture Notes
Art is a barometer of its time, providing the common ground for our shared humanity—essential in a vibrant democracy. I came of age as an artist and administrator in New York in the 1970s. Post modernists, punks, minimalists, and graffiti artists were deconstructing and distilling everyday actions. By the 1980s, some of these provocateurs mainstreamed into galleries and museums, theaters and opera houses. Many audiences were mystified, some transformed by the emergent forms. At the end of the ‘80s, I was performing arts curator at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the aesthetic zeitgeist had changed.
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100824
Welcoming Travelers to a Community Through the Arts
As the gateway to a city, airports are the first and last place that air travelers experience; they are a doorway for passengers and visitors alike. An airport has a broad range of functions, but its visual impact can run the gamut from a blank canvas to a celebration of sights and sounds. As the canvas on which impressions of a destination can be formed, airports have an opportunity to tell their story through permanent and temporary installations as well as through performing arts. When an airport chooses to introduce travelers to the arts and cultural assets of a region and beyond, wonderful things can happen. Each artistic effort says to travelers that not only do the arts matter, but also that the aesthetics of an airport are important.
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100801
Here Comes Summer … Time to Get to Work!
It’s the final countdown! Students stroll down the hallways chatting about summer vacation plans, teachers eyeball stacks of books in the corner and make plans for clean-up and storage, and school leaders are wrapping up teacher evaluation cycles and planning end-of-the-year assemblies. Everyone is racing to the finish line! Now would be a terrible time for arts organizations to reach out to schools to talk about future partnerships, right? WRONG! As they wind down, we should be winding up. As you begin to brainstorm ways to connect with your local schools, here’s a quick list of tips to make the most out of their summer vacation.
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100796
How Technology Supports Becoming a More Resilient, Innovative Arts Funder
The Ohio Arts Council was an early adopter of online grants management technology back in 2005, reflecting its belief that up-to-date tools can play a big role in helping it achieve its mission. That early work was successful, and the agency’s subsequent upgrade to an online system built by SmartSimple in 2015 has now paid dividends as well, contributing to recent increases in service to OAC constituents, streamlining of panel processes and costs, and improvements in end-user satisfaction with the grant application process.
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